Brian Wilshaw, 64, has sold 46,000 tickets costing £25 each for the chance to win his 11.5 acre Oldborough fishing retreat in Morchard Bishop, near Crediton, Devon.

He decided to raffle the estate to beat the slowdown in the property market.

The winning draw was due to be held in November but it has been postponed indefinitely while the Gambling Commission takes a further look at the competition.

Mr Wilshaw said he was "desperately disappointed" at having to postpone the draw and he was in discussions with the Gambling Commission to try to resolve the issue.

The Oldborough estate includes a modern five-bedroom house built in the 1980s, a two-acre fishing lake containing carp, roach, rudd perch, and eels, and four holiday lodges.

The Gambling Commission recently warned that the growing band of homeowners who resort to raffling their properties could be breaking the law.

It said some owners may be committing a criminal offence if the prize competitions fall foul of the Gambling Act 2005.

The schemes work by offering tickets in online competitions which sees a lucky winner "buying" a home outright.

The commission states that a prize competition must ask a degree of knowledge or skill that will that will deter a significant number of people and that the question must be sufficiently challenging to ensure there are clear winners.

The Commission has asked Mr Wilshaw to show a question which entrants needed to answer to buy a raffle ticket was not too easy.

His question asked: "What is the cost of an adult full season coarse fishing license for 2008/2009?'

Mr Wilshaw said: "The commission has asked for more information on the question, despite the fact that we approached them for guidance before the start of the competition in March of this year only to be told that they had no issues.

"We told the commission that only a small minority of the population have purchased coarse fishing licences over the past year, around 500,000 from an adult population of 45 million.

"As such, only a small minority of the public would know the answer to our question without any basic research over the internet which the commission's guidance stated was in line with the current legislation."

Mr Wilshaw pledged that everyone would get their money back if the draw had to be cancelled.

Mr Wilshaw, a heating engineer, who is originally from Manchester, and his wife Wendy, 49, bought the estate 14 years ago and ran it as a small holiday complex until 2006.

The raffle would raise £1,150,000 but deducted from that will be pounds 40,000 stamp duty, the solicitor's and banking fees, leaving the couple with about the £1 million value of the property.